Damned if you do and damned if you do not …

On the one hand the international community expects Palestine to behave like a state, to develop its own personality by signing up to different international treaties – such as the Rome Statute – and on the other we see Israel punishing the Palestinian people for doing just as the world demands … Palestine is held in a bind, just as it has been held for over 60 years.

Israel’s actions – as in withholding taxes right now – do not make peace more possible. It does not put off action in the Hague but makes that action all the more necessary. Israel does not focus on security. Israel repeatedly violates all sense of justice expecting the international community to endorse each and every one of its “crazy making” moves. Madness.

What has been absent in the past 60 years is respect for international law and a clear sense of common purpose justice. Now for the first time, a real move in that direction has been made and we are seeing the standard response from Netanyahu. It is this man that is the threat for Israel. At some point the Israeli people are going to have to see through policies that hold them in the grip of the past. The pain of that past has to be put aside … To keep carrying it is too much.

Withholding tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinians will not make Israel more secure. Security will only come with justice. But these present moves will build up more resentment and encourage more violence, which of course Israeli leaders like the above welcome. The madness must end. All revenue being held back in the form of collected taxes must be returned to the Palestinians …